The April Fools Day leak that Ashton Kutcher has signed to play Steve Jobs in a bio-pic appears on the up-and-up, unlike other "news" on Apple.

First reported yesterday by the (up-for-sale) show biz chronicler Variety, Kutcher will start filming the Jobs story in May, after the "Two and a Half Men" series shuts down for the season. Ashton's physical resemblence to Jobs in the latter's hippy-youth clearly was the clincher.

This is not the Sony Pictures-backed Jobs opus using Walter Isaacson's authorized biography. Rather it's an "indie" project from Five Star Institute focusing more narrowly (maybe for legal reasons) on the early years when Jobs was co-founding Apple in a garage with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne.

Clearly, Sony must now be feeling the heat to find a writer (Aaron Sorkin has expressed "interest") and a star and get its much bigger project off the ground.

FYI - the 1999 film "Pirates of Silicon Valley" also dealt with the founding of Apple and its competition with Microsoft.

Far less credible: Tab Times claims Apple is developing a "killer" 3D camera for iOS devices. Their evidence? The discovery of a patent filing, which in and of itself means little.

Then there's Conan O'Brien's funny YouTube video in which he claims to have discovered a prototype of Apple's much rumored iTV. Turns out to be a clunky old tube TV with an Apple logo plastered on the screen. "Receives four channels!" delights O'Brien.

And how about John Biggs' April 1 piece for TechCrunch? It's kind of a follow up to the absolutely true report that Apple assembler Foxconn is buying a major share of Sharp Electronics, to have a cost-effective panel supplier for current and future products like (maybe) the Apple iTV.

Biggs "follow-up" is that Apple CEO Tim Cook and Foxconn founder Terry Gou have now conspired to buy the town of Guthie Center, Iowa, displacing all 2000 residents, to construct a sprawling Foxconn factory. The good(er) news? The project will bring in and house 300,000 employees, "about 10 percent of Iowa's population."